The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to management of network links by traffic type.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system (IHS). An IHS generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, IHSs may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in IHSs allow for IHSs to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, IHSs may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Additionally, some embodiments of information handling systems include non-transient, tangible machine-readable media that include executable code that when run by one or more processors, may cause the one or more processors to perform the steps of methods described herein. Some common forms of machine readable media include, for example, floppy disk, flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, any other magnetic medium, CD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, RAM, PROM, EPROM, FLASH-EPROM, any other memory chip or cartridge, and/or any other medium from which a processor or computer is adapted to read.
Computer networks form the interconnection fabric that enables reliable and rapid communications between computer systems and data processors that are in both close proximity to each other and at distant locations. These networks create a vast spider web of intranets and internets for handling many types of communication and information. Making this possible is a vast array of network switching products that make forwarding decisions in order to deliver packets of information from a source system or first network node to a destination system or second network node. Due to the size, complexity, and dynamic nature of these networks, sophisticated network switching products are often used to implement the interconnection fabric. This can be further complicated through other networking trends such as parallelization.
Many networks utilize parallelization and other techniques to improve the forwarding function between two network nodes. By employing parallelization, redundancy is built into a network so that it is possible that more than one path exists between any two nodes. This provides suitably aware network switching products with the ability to select between the redundant paths to avoid network congestion, balance network loads, or to avoid failures in the network. Parallelization also provides the ability to handle more network traffic between two nodes than is possible when parallelization is not utilized. When two network switching products are coupled together using multiple network links either of the network switching products may generally select from any of the network links when forwarding network traffic to the other network switching product. In some implementations this parallelization in network is treated in a more formalized fashion in the form of a link aggregation group (LAG). In some implementations, two or more network switching products may be bundled into a peer group to provide redundancy and failover support when one of the network switching products is unable to forward network traffic. To take advantage of the peer group other network switching products may be coupled to more than one of the network switching products in the peer groups using network links. In this configuration, the network links are often bundled into a LAG that is sometimes referred to as a virtual link trunk (VLT).
In order to support the flexible management of the network links in LAGs and VLTs, protocols such as the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) are used to manage the status or state of each of the network links. The network switching products at each end of a network link exchange LACP messages to negotiate when the network link may be used to forward network traffic between the network switching products, whether the network link is part of LAG or VLT, and/or the like. Unfortunately, the mechanisms of LACP generally assume that network traffic using a network link should be treated the same, and this isn't always the case. It may not always be advisable or even possible for network links or the network switching products coupled by the link to handle different types of network traffic.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide improved network switching products that can separately manage different kinds of network traffic on a network link.